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There are few people more financially irrational than a die-hard sports fan in the postseason.
The demand is emotional. The ticket prices are absurd. The resale process behaves less like a marketplace than a hostage negotiation. And yet, people want to be there. It's the textbook definition of fear of missing out, a.k.a. FOMO. They want the championship atmosphere, the roar of the arena, the once-in-a-lifetime ticket they can talk about for years. But increasingly, the price of admission has pushed major sporting events out of reach for the average fan.
But hidden inside that chaos is a useful lesson for incentive planners: Live sports have become one of the great aspirational experiences of modern travel.
As Richelle Suver, managing director at One10, said: "Bucket-list events are trending. They are increasingly showing up as alternatives to more traditional 'sun and fun' incentive destinations."
Money ball
That price point pain is what made sporting events like the first two games of the Knicks-Spurs NBA Finals such a revealing example.
According to TickPick data, the least-expensive tickets for Knicks Finals games at Madison Square Garden were selling for nearly $4,000 each, while the cheapest seats for Game 1 in San Antonio were about $750. CNN also reported that a fan could spend roughly $600 on a few nights in a San Antonio hotel, $700 on round-trip airfare and buy tickets to both Games 1 and 2 at Frost Bank Center and only spend about $3,100, which was less than the cost of one ticket at MSG. For Knicks fans, the math was irresistible: one distant seat at the Garden, or a multiday trip to San Antonio built around two NBA Finals games, a hotel stay, restaurants, the River Walk and the emotional payoff of seeing their team on the road. As anyone watching those games could see, Frost Bank Center was awash in orange and blue Knicks jerseys for the first two games of the series.
But even that "better deal" tells a larger story. A $750 ticket in San Antonio might have looked inexpensive compared with Madison Square Garden, but for most people, that was still prohibitively expensive.
The same dynamic is playing out across the sports world. Championship games, playoff series, rivalry matchups, Formula1 races, tennis majors and global events such as the FIFA World Cup matches have become bucket-list experiences — emotionally powerful, culturally visible and often priced beyond what many consumers can justify on their own.
Make the dream a reward
Incentive programs can build on this trend. For the average fan, even the "value" options can be a stretch once airfare, hotels, meals and transportation are added. For an incentive program, however, that same package can fit the economics of a meaningful reward.
According to the 2025 Incentive Travel Index, the global average spend per person for an incentive travel reward is $5,100. Viewed through that lens, the Knicks fan's San Antonio Finals trip — airfare, hotel and two championship games for about $3,150 — is well within the range of many incentive travel programs. The same can be true for a FIFA World Cup match, a Formula 1 weekend, a tennis major or a championship game when the event is selected strategically and packaged with the right destination experience. That is the opportunity.
This type of reward can be particularly effective when it takes the form of individual incentive travel rather than a group program. Research from the 2026 Investigating the Power of Incentive Travel Across Generations, compiled by the Society for Incentive Travel Excellence and Maritz, stated that 61 percent of participants considered individual incentive travel "very or extremely motivating."
"You had to be there" beats "Here's a gift card"
Scarcity is part of the appeal of bucket-list tickets. Major sporting events are limited by design: a championship series, a World Cup match, a rivalry game or a finals weekend happens in a specific place, at a specific time, and then it is gone. Psychologists who study memory and experience have noted that emotionally intense, unusual events can become durable markers in a person's life story. That is why "I was there" has as much power as FOMO. It turns a ticket into a memory, and a memory into social currency.
The Knicks-San Antonio example illustrates that emotional architecture. The fans did many of the things incentive program participants might do on a well-designed trip: They flew to the destination, checked into downtown hotels, ate in local restaurants, walked the River Walk, experienced the city between marquee events and came home with a story that grew larger in the retelling.
The same structure can apply to other sports experiences. A FIFA World Cup reward does not have to mean tickets to the final in New Jersey. It could mean a group of winners flying to Houston, Seattle, Kansas City or the Bay Area for a match, with the ticket serving as the anchor and the rest of the reward built around hospitality, local dining, destination tours and recognition moments.
For incentive planners, that distinction matters. The most powerful reward might not always be the most expensive seat in the most obvious market. It could be the experience that feels rare, personal and difficult to replicate.
Vincent Alonzo is a journalist and storyteller who has covered the meetings, events, conventions and incentive travel industries for more than 30 years.